Milan Township, Allen County, Indiana

A church in Milan Center.

The principal town in Milan Township is Milan Center, at 41°8'39"N 84°56'46"W. Milan Center lies at the intersection of Milan Center Road and Doty Road, and at an earlier time consisted of Brueggemann's (previously Van Camp's,[3] a combination lumberyard, gas station, hardware and grocery store), a small wood-frame church, Milan Center School, a feed mill, and four houses. Additional enterprises have come and gone through the years.[4]

Brueggemann's Do-It-Best Center subsequently left to build a new store several miles removed to take advantage of traffic on State Highway 37 (at Ricker Road). The original Milan Center structure subsequently was lost to fire, and the relocated Brueggemann's closed April 12, 2014 after 100 years of business.[5]

Five Points is a settlement located at the junction of Old US Highway 24, Webster Road, and Woodburn Road, along the old Wabash-Erie Canal route. At one time it consisted of a small diner for truckers, a gas station (later a bicycle shop), a tile mill, and a few homes. A newer water tower labeled "Woodlan" near the Woodlan Schools may result in the community being known as "Woodlan" in the coming years.[6]

Gar Creek was once a shipping point on the Wabash and Toledo Railroad. A small community of 500 people eventually settled around the station. In 1883, lumber and grain were the primary exports of the station. Gar Creek enterprises at that time included a shingle manufacturer, two carpenters, a Justice of the Peace, a saw mill, a general store with a railway agent and a Postmaster (Jesse Rothgeb), a blacksmith, a hoop manufacturer, and United Brethren and Lutheran churches. The population at that time was listed as 130.[7]

Thurman was a settlement located on the Detroit branch of the old Wabash Railroad. A few homes and businesses remain to this day.[8] Parts of Thurman were incorporated into Fort Wayne on March 31, 2008 as part of the "Schwartz Road Voluntary Annexation".[9]

The Maumee-Milan Consolidated School System (constituents: Maumee Township, including the city of Woodburn, and Milan Township)[4] built and dedicated Woodlan High School for the 1959–1960 school year.[10] Located in Milan Township, the school lies just east of Five Points on the Woodburn Road. Students previously attending Harlan High School began attending Woodlan in the autumn of 1965, as the area's smaller school districts had been further consolidated into the East Allen County Schools a year earlier.[11] Junior high and elementary schools are also now located on the campus.

The major industries in the county are agriculture, building trades, and rubber manufacturing. The largest employer in the township is BF Goodrich. The plant manufactures BF Goodrich and generic-branded tires for passenger cars and light trucks. BF Goodrich is a division of Michelin North America. As of 2016, 1,650 workers were employed at the facility located on Old U.S. Highway 24. Shortly after opening in 1961, the mile-long plant was featured in the national media as the "longest" manufacturing facility in the country at the time. It has been upgraded and expanded subsequently several times. The facility, which lies just east of the Woodlan Schools, comprises the highest-assessed real estate and business personal property value in the East Allen County Schools’ territory. Many plant employees are represented by United Steelworkers Local 715.[12]

The indigenous inhabitants of Milan Township were the Algonquian-speaking Miami People. In the “Treaty with the Miami” executed on October 23, 1826, one section, 640 acres, of Milan Township land was reserved for “Laventure’s daughter”, whose father, Laventure Toucher, was a French trader and whose mother may have been a Miami.[13]

Laventure Toucher had been convicted of treason by the British in Fort Detroit in 1779 during the Revolutionary War. The colonists had recruited neutral French inhabitants of the Detroit region to be spies and sympathizers for the American cause.[14]

The reserved section occupied land bordered now by the Rohman and Platter roads. At the time of Indian Removal in 1846, those Miami who held separate allotments of land were allowed to stay as citizens in Indiana. Around 1872 the reserve was partially sold to non-native settlers, and by 1879, plat books were showing the “first family” Milan Township surnames of Lampe, Vondereau, Shafer, Bruick, Landin, and Yerks on that land.[15]

Although the Indiana Miami were recognized by the US in an 1854 treaty, that recognition was stripped in 1897. While an Indiana Miami Nation still exists to this day, the officially US-recognized relocated Miami Nation resides in Oklahoma. In 1980, the Indiana legislature recognized the Indiana Miami and voted to support federal recognition.[16][17]

Milan Township was first organized by the County Commissioners in March, 1838, being petitioned for, and named by, resident Stephen Heath, in honor of Milan Township, Huron County, Ohio: his former home (the township now resides in neighboring Erie County). The origin of the “Milan” name in Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio remains obscure.[18]

Charles Shriner erected the first frame house in 1838. It was attached to a log building. Alvin Hall erected the second frame house in 1841. William R. Herrick erected the first frame barn in the spring of 1850.[19]

The first road was surveyed in 1840 by Horace Taylor. It was called the Ridge Road, and extended from Fort Wayne to Hicksville, Ohio. The first stores in the township were operated by Stephen Heath and Lorenzo D. George.[19]

The first township election was held in April, 1842; Andrew Wakefield was elected Justice of the Peace, and John Nettle, Constable. The positions were voluntary, as there were no salaries.[19]

Amish settlement began in 1852–1853, when eleven wagons carrying fifty-two people, mainly recent immigrants from the Alsace, migrated to Allen County from Stark County, Ohio.[20] Peter Graber was the first bishop. Three distinct divisions subsequently evolved in the community: the most-conservative Old Order Amish, the more progressive Amish-Mennonites, and the most liberal, the "Defenseless" (Egli) Mennonites.[21]

Support for rural public schools originated with the Federal Land Ordinance of 1785, which began the land surveys that laid out townships and sections across the growing nation. Every township was to consist of thirty-six sections containing 640 acres each. Section 16 and later, in 1848, section 36, were set aside to support schools.[25] That ordinance largely failed in Indiana, but a few townships actually did use their surveyed “Section 16’s” for educational purposes, as prescribed in the ordinance.

Following statehood in 1816, the Indiana General Assembly then passed a complex series of acts (in 1824, 1849, and 1852) to organize and develop the public school system at the state, county, and township levels. School districts were created and given the authority to establish district schools at the township level. School district representatives were to be elected to the township trustees. State and local tax-support was provided on a county-by-county basis.

A number of schoolhouses were then built soon following 1852, but the majority were ultimately constructed following the Civil War. By 1900, over 8,000 one-room schools stood statewide. Later, with changes in demographics and the onset of school consolidations, the General Assembly gave the State Superintendent the means to close districts where attendance was under 12 pupils. Today there are over 700 surviving one-room schoolhouse structures in Indiana; the majority of these date from 1865 - 1900.[26]

Milan Township had at least 13 “District” schools.[27][28][29][30][31]

What was to become “District School No. 1” was actually the first school constructed in the township. It opened in a log building in 1845; the first teacher was Catherine Shell. The structure was replaced by a frame building in 1857 when it officially became a District School. That building was erected by Alvin Hall, who was the first carpenter in the township.[32]

While "Brush College" appears to have been a popular designation at the time (i.e., the term was also used in Cedar Creek Township and in Huntington County), some muse that this one-room district schoolhouse in the "brushy woods" may have been a site to train teachers.[42]

While all of these diseases are unheard of in the township today, each of these potentially life-ending scourges touched Milan Township at an earlier time. Groundbreaking on the Wabash and Erie Canal was 1832, and the canal was ultimately finished in 1856. Along the way to completion, it was said that a construction worker passed away from either cholera or malaria for every 6 feet of the canal being built. The length of the canal was 452 miles, from Toledo, OH to Evansville, IN.[23]

In November 1899 an epidemic of smallpox was “prevailing in Milan Township,” according to a Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette article from the time. A cluster of cases six miles southeast of Maysville “in a heavily populated area” was described, apparently stretching to the Ohio Line. Homes of infected individuals were placed under total police-supervised quarantine and all individuals exposed to those cases were placed under quarantine. Milan Center School was ordered by the health department to be closed until the threat of contagion had passed. Of interesting note was a particular smallpox-associated odor which could be detected outside each of the infected households.[43]

There are only two bridges spanning the Maumee River in Milan Township. The following original iron bridges have both been replaced with reinforced concrete structures.

In the mid-20th century, telephone communication across relatively short distances could be prohibitively expensive. Northern Milan township had traditionally been served by the Harlan telephone exchange, and southern Milan township by the New Haven telephone exchange. To make a call between differing exchanges, one could incur so-called "long distance" surcharges. Brueggemann's store at Milan Center served as a progressive business and community center by having telephones from both exchanges. The New Haven telephone exchange was purchased by the Home Telephone company in Fort Wayne, which was itself subsequently acquired by General Telephone of Indiana. The Harlan telephone company was also eventually acquired by General Telephone of Indiana. General Telephone is now a part of Verizon.[49]

May Sand and Gravel once operated a stone quarry located along Old US 24, across from the BF Goodrich tire plant. Core samples were collected by researchers Doheny, Droste, and Shaver from the Indiana Geological Survey and Indiana University in 1975. The researchers catalogued a stratum of fossil sediment containing dolomite (calcium magnesium carbonate) and subsequently described its distribution from an origin in Northwestern Indiana, through veins to northeastern Indiana with varying thickness, erosion, and displacement by other strata along the way. Termed the “Milan Center Dolomite Member”, the name was taken from “Milan Center Township”[sic], in which the Woodburn Quarry was located. This Milan Center Member was classified to be “Eifelian” in age.[50]

In later prehistory and into the frontier days, Milan Township laid nearly entirely within the far western area of a glacial valley described today as the Great Black Swamp. Then in the 19th century, its wetlands were drained for travel, settlement, and agriculture. Stands of old-growth forests were felled and used for timber interests upon settlement.[51] The Great Black Swamp extended eastward and downward from the old "Ridge Road," which is now Maysville Road.

The Maumee River flows through the township in a northeast course, and Twelve Mile and Ten Mile Creeks flow through the central part, joining the Maumee. Six Mile Creek drains the southwestern part of the township.[32]

According to the United States Census Bureau, Milan Township covers an area of 37.49 square miles (97.09 km²); of this, 37.18 square miles (96.29 km²) is land and 0.31 square miles (0.80 km²), or 0.83%, is water.[1]

John Chapman, “Johnny Appleseed” (1774-1845) Itinerant Swedenborgian missionary, nurseryman. At the time of his death, operated a 15,000-apple-tree nursery in Milan township.[56] Buried in Archer Park, Fort Wayne.

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